Part 3.1: Pulling out the weeds

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I kinda abandoned my last journal, mostly because I went to see my family back home & obviously relapsed hard on shows and other stupid nonsense. Then I was basically traveling for nearly 2 months straight and didn't have the time or energy to keep up anything.

But things have been overall not bad. I still haven't played any computer games, so it's now been over a year since I last touched one of those. That's a huge win, and I think the biggest factor was letting go of my ~$500 Steam account. I rarely get cravings anymore even. I have been here and there with mobile games & that's something I need to work on.

There's been a major update in my life: my wife got into a graduate program at a uni, so we once again did a trans-continental move. Finance-wise things will be a lot tighter in the new place and we're living in a studio-ish apartment (it's got a tiny 2nd room that fits a desk and not much else). But it's actually good for several reasons: I'm now surrounded by pretty committed students all around me and it's making me more committed to doing something with my life myself. Also, my desk is now out in the open. I can't secretly do crap aside from when my wife is in class, so I'm a lot less tempted to do stupid things.

Movies, TV, and YouTube have not been an issue for the last two months. I'm not really sure why. I think it's probably because I've been so busy with the move that I've always had something better to do. I'm really happy for them not to be an issue, since games & shows have been my primary addiction fuel. I'm not very confident that I'll be able to maintain this, because at some point life will settle down a bit and I'll probably have more opportunity to waste time. Which is why I'm starting this journal up again.

So here's what I want to accomplish with this journal:

- Maintain my game & vid-free streak. I'll allow myself an occasional video to watch, but no more than 1 and nothing actually harmful (like gaming vids, news, and other stuff that sucks you in). No getting stuck on YT for hours.

- No more phone in the washroom. This has been tripping me up a lot lately and wasting more time than it should.

- No mobile games.

I have some "positive" habits that I want to work on as well, but I'll keep things easy for now and will focus on what I should NOT do. I feel like right now, none of the above requires a LOT of willpower (although there's a particular mobile game that's been eating up a lot of my time as of late).

I think that's it. I've come a long way already, and if I can do the above goals for 120 days, I think my life will be in a very good place overall.

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Hi @karabas, it's been long since I talked with you. How are things so far?

On 9/7/2019 at 3:12 PM, karabas said:

There's been a major update in my life: my wife got into a graduate program at a uni, so we once again did a trans-continental move. Finance-wise things will be a lot tighter in the new place and we're living in a studio-ish apartment (it's got a tiny 2nd room that fits a desk and not much else). But it's actually good for several reasons: I'm now surrounded by pretty committed students all around me and it's making me more committed to doing something with my life myself. Also, my desk is now out in the open. I can't secretly do crap aside from when my wife is in class, so I'm a lot less tempted to do stupid things.

That's great, not a lot of gamers who want to quit could have the opportunity (like you have) to surround themselves with mindsets similar with yours.